Sweet Memories Lead Adults Back to Sugary Roots : New Interest in Old Confection Favorites Sends Candy Sales to New Heights

Halloween candy fiends may be getting older this year. Confectioners have found themselves a new and eager market: big kids hankering for a little piece of childhood.

Adults in their 30s and 40s can fill their bags once again with the candy, gum and other goodies they used to get at the malt shop and the corner grocery. They’re back--straight from the 1950s: Black Jack and Beeman’s gum. Rocky Road, Big Hunk and Sugar Daddy. Wax mustaches and teeth. Jujubes. Pez.

A nostalgia craze is sweeping the nation’s candy counters, sweetening the coffers of confectioners and sticking to the teeth of the middle-aged crowd seeking the pleasures of their youth.

Due in large part to this growing market, candy sales are expected to soar in 1986 to $11 billion, up from last year’s high of nearly $9 billion, according to the National Confectioners Assn. Americans consumed an average of 19.5 pounds of candy last year, up more than three pounds from the 1981 average of 16.1 pounds.

The last time U.S. consumption neared this level was in 1945, when World War II and sugar rations came to an end and Americans ate an average of 20.5 pounds of candy.

“Our candy customers are all in suits and ties. Lawyers, stockbrokers, the commercial real estate guys,” said Angela Newcome, manager of Heaven Pop Cuisine, a 1950s-style store and restaurant in Century City that is basking in the trend toward things past. The professionals’ favorite items, reports Newcome, are Daffy Duck Pez dispensers, Bazooka bubble gum and wax coke bottles.

Candy makers with rights to patented brands popular in the 1950s also are reporting a resurgence in sales. Bars like Cup O’ Gold, Abba-Zabba, Charleston Chew and 5th Avenue are moving faster through wholesalers and can be found at markets and drugstores that recognize that the fans are still out there--even if nickel candy now costs about 50 cents.

“A lot of the newly popularized candy is from the ‘50s, with good reason,” said John McMillin, an industry analyst with Prudential Bache Securities. “You can’t drink anymore. You can’t smoke anymore. The only way for 30- and 40-year-olds to have some fun is to eat some candy. They look for what they ate as kids.”

A few candy strategists are banking on McMillin’s theory by reintroducing once dead brands and adding new twists to old standbys.

Warner-Lambert’s American Chicle division announced this month that it will once again manufacture Beeman’s, Black Jack and Clove chewing gums for Halloween consumers this October.

After receiving “about 50 letters a month from people in their 40s” who want the gum, Warner-Lambert decided on a cautious approach--giving the chewing gums a three-month trial during the Halloween season, when candy makers reap nearly 25% of their annual sales.

Invasion of Sugarless Gum

“We’re hoping that parents will recognize it on the shelves, buy it and hand it out to hundreds of kids at Halloween,” said Warner-Lambert spokesman Marshall Molloy. “At least that would be the ideal situation.”

Production was ceased on the chewing gums in the mid-’70s, when their unusual tastes did not hold up against sugarless gums, which were then the rage, Molloy said.

The spicy Beeman’s was invented in 1898 as a cure for heartburn. Clove, which is a sweetened version of the spice, was hot as a breath freshener in Prohibition-era liquor houses. Black Jack, the oldest sweetened chewing gum in America, invented in 1870, tastes like licorice and has been known to turn tongues black.

“Obviously we’ve got a core of devotees,” said Molloy. “But it’s been 10 years, and beyond that, we have no idea how it will do.” And 10 years can change things, including the price, which will be doubled to 30 cents for a five-stick pack.

The Rocky Road bar, a nutty, marshmallowy confection at the height of its popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, is also staging a Halloween comeback of sorts. Annabelle’s Candy Co. of Hayward, which invented the bar in 1950, is introducing a new snack-sized Rocky Road this month.

“We’ve just had so many adults wanting small versions of the old brands, we’ll be making snack-sized Abba-Zabbas, Big Hunks and U-Nos next year,” said Annabelle’s president and namesake, Annabelle Altschuler Block.

Annabelle’s purchased the older brand names in 1978 from then-manufacturer Ralston Purina and is considering bringing more back into production. “The Baffle bar is a real nostalgia bar, and we’ve had so many requests, it may be on the shelves soon,” Block said.

If the fudgy bar does reappear, it will apparently be the first chocolate bar to do so in about 15 years, according to Ray Brockel, a candy authority and columnist for Candy Wholesaler magazine.

‘Want a Walnetto?’

The last bar to be resurrected, he said, was the Walnetto, small squares of caramel and walnut slivers that reached a peak of popularity in the 1930s as the sponsor of the “Uncle Don’s Radio Hour” children’s show. The 1-cent nougats fell on hard times due to competition in the late 1950s and were discontinued until the “Laugh-In” show brought them back to the limelight.

“When Arte Johnson said to Ruth Buzzie again and again on the telecast, ‘Want a Walnetto?’ people wondered what they were,” Brockel recalled. The Peter Paul candy company put the Walnetto back into production for eight or nine years before it was discontinued indefinitely, he said.

“But old names have been sticking around,” said Brockel. “Some of them barely hang on until something creates interest again. Then they sell because generations suddenly remember what the bars were.”

Such may be the case with Pez.

The candy tablets that pop out of plastic dispensers may have received the boost of their lifetime in the current film “Stand by Me.” The movie depicts four pre-teen boys expounding on life in 1959, when one of them says, “If I could only have one thing to eat for the rest of my life? That’s easy. Pez. Cherry-flavored Pez.”

The scene hit such a reminiscent chord in adult audiences that Columbia Pictures has used the quote in print advertisements. And Pez is quickly leaving the counters at stores like Heaven Pop Cuisine, although dispensers that once cost 35 cents now fetch $1.50.

“We definitely have nostalgia appeal,” said Scott McWhinnie, president of Connecticut-based Pez-Haas Inc. “We are always included in articles about the baby boomers. And they still make up part of our sales.”

Sales of Pez, which relies solely on name recognition for advertising, have increased 30% each year for the past three years, McWhinnie said. “That’s such a large growth rate, I don’t know if we’ll be able to tell what kind of impact ‘Stand by Me’ will have, but I know that more adults are coming back.”

Russ Shipley, executive vice president of the National Candy Wholesalers Assn., said the resurgence in the adult candy market is not confined to nostalgia alone. “Sure, we’ve got this new craze in old confections. But it’s all your so-called yuppies,” said Shipley. “And yuppies go for quality and size. A lot of manufacturers are aiming at adults that way.”

Among them is Nestle Co., which last year introduced the Alpine bar, an all white-chocolate bar “that’s now extremely popular among quality-conscious adults,” said Shipley.

Hershey also introduced Golden III, a new adult chocolate and nut bar, in March. Whitman’s Chocolates is trying to put a new twist on its best-selling Whitman’s Sampler with Whitman’s Lite, chocolates with low-calorie centers being introduced this year. But word on the success of either product is still not available.

The 1950s-style Heaven Pop Cuisine stores report that they sell modern candies such as the Kit Kat bar and Snickers in large numbers. “But it’s our nostalgia stuff that really moves. People come in and say, ‘Hey, I used to eat that,’ and then they buy it,” said Genn’a Mordecai, who coordinates advertising for the stores.

The chain was founded in Century City in 1979 by author and artist Brad Benedict as “a romanticized, fantasized, movie-version malt shop.” The stores, filled with 1950s-style items and music, also serve burgers and fries at stainless steel counters in the rear.

Now owned by HVN Corp., Heaven Pop Cuisine has begun franchising throughout California and is considering the East Coast market. A store has been opened in San Diego’s Horton Plaza, and stores will open in November near the Silicon Valley in San Jose and in Palos Verdes. Plans are under way for a 6,000-square-foot store in San Francisco’s financial district.

The HVN Corp. partners, Wayland Lew, Rodney Lee and Jerry Lee, are negotiating with investors and considering taking the company public early next year.

Two other stores, operated separately in the Beverly Center and Sherman Oaks, are owned by William Cohn, Martin Berens and Russell Berens. They, too, seem to be enjoying success with the same nostalgia theme.

“Are we clamoring to the past or what?” asked Mordecai at the Century City store. “Grown men smoking candy cigarettes. Women eating tablets from a Wonder Woman dispenser. It’s crazy.”